New Horizon_architecture from Ireland presents the work of ten emerging Irish practices to an international audience, selected by curators Nathalie Weadick, Irish Architecture Foundation, and Raymund Ryan, Heinz Architectural Center at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. Cognizant of the Festival’s theme, The State of the Art of Architecture, three Irish practices have been tasked to make an intervention – part installation, part exhibition – in the Chicago Design Museum. The architects propose to construct a temporary mirrored canopy, to fabricate a generous communal table, and to present a selection of work from their offices in Dublin. The three practices are A2 Architects (Peter Carroll and Caomhán Murphy), GKMP Architects (Grace Keeley and Michael Pike), and Ryan W. Kennihan Architects. They have planned an elegant intervention augmenting the structure of the Design Museum and riffing on the legacy of Wright and of Mies’s geometric Modernism. Visitors are invited to linger about the unique table and several events will explore cultural, social and political connections between Chicago and Ireland. New Horizon is a constituent of Irish Design 2015 (ID2015), a year-long initiative backed by the Irish government exploring, promoting and celebrating Irish design throughout Ireland and internationally in order to drive job creation, grow exports and increase competitiveness. Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, is Patron of ID2015.

Biography of Speaker/Presenter: 
Curated by Raymund Ryan + Nathalie Weadick. 

Raymund Ryan is Curator of the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Exhibitions in Pittsburgh include "Frank Lloyd Wright: Renewing the Legacy" (2005), "Gritty Brits: New London Architecture" (2007) and "Laboratory of Architecture/Fernando Romero" (2009). "White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes" opened at the Carnegie in September 2012 and at Yale School of Architecture in February 2013. Ryan was Commissioner for Irish participation at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000 and 2002, worked for Kevin Roche in Hamden, Connecticut and for Arthur Erickson in Los Angeles, taught in the School of Architecture, University College Dublin from 1993 to 2003, and served as a studio critic at universities across U.S. and on competition juries. In addition to authoring a number of works, he has been a nominator or advisor for many publications, exhibitions and award programs in the U.S. and Europe. 

Nathalie Weadick is Director of the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF), a national organization committed to communicating architecture to the public. She developed the successful Open House Dublin initiative as well as established a national and international program of events and exhibitions. In 2014 she curated "The Everyday Experience," an art and architecture season in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In 2010 she was Commissioner for the Irish exhibition at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at Venice and in 2008 was co-commissioner and co-curator of "The Lives of Spaces" at Venice. She is an author, a member of the Curating Architecture Forum at Goldsmiths and the Architectural Humanities Research Association, a committee member of the Government Policy on Architecture Advisory Panel (Ireland) and a regular advisor for European Prize for Urban Public Space (Barcelona). In 2010 she was awarded a place on the British Councils Cultural Leadership International Programme.